Exclusive: An Interview With The New Electric

On a rainy Thursday evening in downtown Toronto, I meet up with the guys from The New Electric. Currently on tour with Courage My Love they were in town for their Canadian Music Week showcase happening at The Velvet Underground.

For those unfamiliar with the band, The New Electric had an exciting 2016, winning “Group of the Year” at the First Annual YYC Awards in Calgary, and they released their debut EP Living Loud.

In addition, The New Electric, have won Corus Radio’s “Next Big Thing” and Bell Media’s “Future Star” competitions. Comprised of Calgary natives Kyle McKearny (lead vocals), Shade “Indy“ McKearney (bass & vocals), Chris Doi (bass & vocals) and Adam Casey (drums & vocals), the band continued their rise in the fall of 2016 when they had the opportunity to support Backstreet BoyNick Carter, on a 3-week Cross-Canada tour.

A tour which provided Indy McKearney with some perspective “I learned something very awesome from being on the Nick Carter tour and that was you can be at the top, and still be the most humble, giving and awesome person.”

For lead singer Kyle McKearney it was a chance to see the future, “We totally learned about what a bigger tour looks like and the staff involved and what it takes to make a big engine like that work, it was really cool“.

As we discuss their debut EP, I bring up “Inside Out” one of my personal favorite tracks from the album, and mention how their official video for the song opens with a quote about equality

Fight for equality and love. No matter how different our stories are. Everyone deserves to love and be loved

Kyle, who wrote the song just before he got married, admits he was “really in the wedding zone, and excited to marry my wife“, but that the video is “definitely something that I think we all strongly believe in, that everyone deserves to be loved and that equality is what’s going to bring us into our better, heightened awareness as a humanity“.

Discussing music, and how positive and proactive their musical voice seems to be, leads us to their latest single “T-Shirt“, which Kyle admits is inspired by the fun energy of L.A “I wrote that song in LA, out in the sun on Venice Beach, and the idea came that you might meet someone there who’ll wake up in your t-shirt and I think that’s kinda cool”

After double checking with this band mates that it’s OK to tell the story, Indy shares what went on behind the scenes while recording,

“So we’re about to leave Vancouver and the producer we were working with for the song Ryan Stewart, he gets a hold of us and he’s like ‘There’s just a couple things I need to fix, can you come in, I just need you to sing a couple things’.

So we go into the studio and we’re all sitting there and Kyle’s in the vocal booth recording stuff, and every time Ryan hits record, the track comes in and Kyle starts to sing and he’s like not on key, singing flat, just not quite hitting it. And then Ryan pauses it and he’s like ‘No Kyle it’s like this’ and without the music playing Kyle repeats what Ryan wants him to do perfectly.

So then Ryan hits record, and the track starts again and Kyle’s flat again, so we did that for like 2 hours, and then finally Kyle was like ‘Hey can you try turning the bass off in the track?’ So what was happening was the bass was enveloping everything else and he couldn’t hear the actual structure of the song. Once he turned the bass down, it was perfect.”

As we wrap up I ask them if they have any advice for artists considering a similar path in life and Kyle jumps at the chance “I think about this a lot, because someone once told me what I’m about to tell you. Don’t worry about anything, except the music. Focus on learning how to write great songs, and when you think you’ve written a great song, maybe you haven’t, maybe you have, but when you have, you’ll feel it and people will tell you”

Indy agrees with Kyle’s sentiment completely “I just want to add one thing to it. You better love it, cause if you don’t love it, it’s going to be really hard“.

Something Chris also agrees with “Music is the smallest piece of the pie, so if you don’t love that, you’re not going to be able to keep up with the rest of it.”

To keep up with Canada’s next big band, make sure to connect on social and find a show near you.